Halloween

We have life subtext going on, and some BIG PARENTING THINGS that we are trying to figure out, but, for grandma and I'm going to make this blog into a photo book later, we have pictures.

I'm a Yeller

Ya'll.  We are struggling here.

You can see the happy moments.  I litter them on Facebook and Instagram.  There are many of them.  That isn't fake  There are SO MANY OF THEM.

But then, there are the other moments.  #fakenews

I don't come from a family of yellers.  I'm not genetically a yeller.

People?  It turns out I'm a yeller.

Oif.  I am SO NOT A YELLER.

I remember the first (and probably only time) Shawn and I got in a real fight.  It was while dating.  It was a doozy.  I probably was justified in yelling. Saying that covers me in glory.  So OF COURSE I was justified in yelling.

And afterwards?  I shook for like 36 hours.  I don't think I had ever yelled in my life.

I'm a pretty gray zone gal.  I can see both sides of all the things. I can thoughtful inquiry with the best of them.

Parenting though?

The last year has been a kick in the face.

Maybe the first way-station was at the "Montessori Discipline" workshop at school.  So many lovely tools were presented.  I gleefully knew that I was a authoritative, not authoritarian, not permissive parent.  I was setting boundaries.  Everyone was responding.  WE ARE SO GOOD AT THIS.

We get to tools.  One word.  Repeated calmly.

"Come".  Or "Now".  Or "Bed".  Or "Shoes".  Steel eyes.  Focus on the child.  Convey confident and meaning.

Ok, great.  Let's test these tools out.

LOOK!  THEY WORK!

When you are NOT trying to do shoes (times three).  NOW (times three).  Wicked smart kids (times three).

Ya'll.

I yell.

So much.

Too much.

And here I am, struggling mightily for kids to use words instead of emotions.

And me?  I'm leading with emotions.

And they are SIX.  And FOUR.  And TWO.

And so very good.  Until they just know when you needle in.

Kids.  So good at needling.

Except for when there's just that I'm-sure-totally-developmentally-appropriate-boundary-testing and I fear these are the moments they will remember.  Dragon Mom.

But our life is so on the margins.  When the schedule and plan and process doesn't play out, everything goes to yell.  We are so in the process right now.  School, work, FTA, soccer, lacrosse, early closures, pack lunch, make dinner, catch bus, walk dog, doctors appointments, teacher work days,  boy scouts, church... just life.

There's not much space.

R bounces back.  He's not so worried.  He doesn't have an internal voice inside that processes right and wrong.  That makes me worry in the long term big time.

AH processes so deeply.  She hears EVERY WORD I SAY.  She stays up worrying.  She makes up songs about how "there are other ways to show we are strong than trying to pick up people"... and "I knew I chose wrong, I know how to choose right".  I hear them but not in front of me.

And James is so chilly willy still, but watching choices being made, and being two, just testing what is doable.

Tell me you yell.

Tell me how to fix this.

How can I be a yeller for the first time with the kids?

How do I feel better other than THROWING EVERYTHING AWAY #AskMeAboutTodaysGiantPurgeOfThings

Ask me about avoiding situations that just might be a little too hard?

Tell me I'm not alone.

First Day!

It's R and A's last first day without James.

Thank goodness for quality early childhood education in DC, and for being lucky enough to be a in a sustained long-term public school.

Montessori ya'll?  It's weird.  But it works.  It works so well.

Joy

There's so many moments of great joy right now, but we are definitely living moment to moment.

It is so hard to choose joy as the prevailing feeling when things are hard.

Remind me always that's important.

Boy

Maybe I'm not as good about the passing of time as I remember.

Because today, this grown man reported for Tiger Scout duty.

I have a summer full of memories to post.

But this photo.

This is the passing of baby-ness.

I have the curly lock in my bag.  I'm not sure it is ever going to come out.

At the Table

2024 update.  YES WE ARE STILL DOING THIS.  Seven years later.  The legislation is terrifying. The Court Rulings are terrifying.  Don't let your family resolution dull your advocacy.  We are in important times to claw back basic health care rights.

How can you get involved? Here's a launching place: https://resolve.org/ Happy to message offline if you want more ways in your state or family situation.

_________________________________________. 

Tonight was my long-anticipated, fretted about and totally awesome opportunity to keynote the Resolve the National Infertility Association's Advocacy Day Welcome Reception.

I did it, and I shared my words below because I believe them with every fiber of my being.  Thank you for being a part of our story.  We are holding those who are still waiting in our hearts.

Susann Edwards Remarks

Keynote, RESOLVE Advocacy Day Welcome Reception

17-May-2017

Welcome to Washington. 

By now you’ve ridden the wrong direction on the metro, questioned your fashionable over functional shoe choice, Instagrammed a photo of yourself in front of a monument or two, and stood awkwardly in the corner of this room trying to muster the courage to talk to someone.  Hell, I’ve done all those things today, and I’ve lived here eighteen years.

I’ve spent 18 years trying to figure this city out.  I was a kid who loved campaigns and politics….and even considering the news from the last 36 hours -- I still do.  I still feel the magic when I look at the Capitol Building.  I still fundamentally believe that people come to Washington because they want to make a difference.  And I still believe that Washington needs you, people exactly like you to show up.  And speak up.  And here you are.

Because infertility doesn’t give a damn if you own a pink knitted hat or you want to make America Great Again.

Me? 

I’m infertile.

And I’m a lobbyist. 

As you can imagine, I’m a hit at most cocktail parties.

I won’t bore you with my infertility story.  But I will tell you, I’m the most in-your-face person with infertility you’ll ever meet because I believe, fundamentally that pushing this conversation into the shadows is so destructive.

I was your typical Tracy Flick from the movie Election DC story.  I came here in my tiny Ford Probe with all my worldly possessions ready to put career-first, career-driven, and career-only.  I had some mighty things to do before I got married.  I wanted to become a Vice President at my firm.  I wanted to work on a winning Presidential campaign.  I wanted to sign three lobbying clients a year, pass some groundbreaking legislation, before finding a tall corn-fed Midwestern, Democratic politics and football loving labor union man, get married, move back to the hometown, have 2.5 kids and maybe run for office myself someday.

Let’s just say that my husband is a short, Republican Southerner… but he does love football and he’s a great husband and human being.

But those 2.5 kids weren’t as easy as my little sister’s easy fertility or my mother in law getting pregnant at 40 with my husband would indicate.

We spent a long time…three years… of pulling the goalie with no successful pregnancies before figuring out this wasn’t a good thing. 

So I started using the google to search for blogs with the phrases infertility, or IUI or IVF or Shady Grove SOMEWHERE in the text.  Anything to find a lifeline.

So what's my story? Sure. I had infertility coverage. After proof of at least 18 months of unsuccessful trying. That didn't cover any pre-testing. Or any drugs. Or any medically unnecessary blood tests or ultrasounds. And oh yes, my owned by a progressive New York media conglomerate firm’s best insurance option has a limit of $2000 per procedure, or $4000 over a lifetime.

And I know, beyond a doubt that I’m in a room of people who know exactly what that means. Not much. Not even the medicines on an injectible IUI. So we made choices, we all do.  We held off on vacations.  We went into debt, we stayed in our starter home.

But it wasn’t until I first attended RESOLVE Advocacy Day four years ago that the universe punched me in the face. 

If there’s one thing I want you to take awake from tonight other than a little buzz from that chadonnay, it’s this:  If you aren’t at the table, you are on the menu. 

If you aren’t at the table, you are on the menu. 

PEOPLE, we were on the menu.  We ARE on the menu.

And its high time we get seats at the table for some more people, because we need to rewrite that menu. 

So I started talking, YOU started talking. 

And you find out there are people dealing with infertility all around you. They are best friends and mentors. Old babysitting charges and old babysitters. They are the women who sit outside your office answering your phone, and 10 offices down in the massive corner office.

They are your Congresswomen, Congressmen, and even some of your newly elected Senators.

They are the women and men who hold their tongues, a lot. Sometimes they want to punch you. Or random mothers of 7 in Walmart.  Or those 19 kids (and counting) on TLC.

They are happy when you get pregnant, but go home and cry.

They dread baby showers more than the dentist.

They cringe when you ask "Do you have kids?"... "When are you going to have kids"... even "Are you sure you WANT to have kids?"

A few years ago, the National Infertility Awareness Week theme was “Resolve to Know More”.  That’s the one that did it for me.

You know about IUIs and follicle counts and IVF and vanishing twins and late-term losses, and adoption waits and rewaits and damn you are an expert at waiting.  You know about paperwork and social work and marital work.

You’re way more comfortable with being naked waist down with a complete stranger than you’ll admit.

Tomorrow, you’ll speak to Congress about the facts: about personhood and adoption tax credits and support for our veterans and servicemembers, but my charge to you in order to make this real and tangible is to tell Congress about the story that you carry in your backpack every day. 

Tell Congress about the moment when you and your Dad discussed infertility through the spectrum of what was advertised in the bulletin for his Catholic church and maybe he thought you just weren’t timing things right.

Tell Congress about how you, as a person of faith struggle with a faithful place for your diagnosis and next steps and how personhood fits into the equation.

Tell Congress about how one of those random google blog searches for the word Shady Grove turned out to be someone you knew in real life and neither of you were talking about your struggles.

Tell Congress about how a military spouse and a librarian and a Floridian and lawyers and teachers and social workers and lobbyists and virtual strangers connect via Twitter to support each other's fertility journey, because it is the only safe place to talk.

Tell Congress about the rituals we all have.  The pineapple.  The lucky socks.  Switching from briefs to boxers.  What I ate for breakfast that day or didn't eat.  The shows I watched, and the twinges I watched out for.

Tell Congress about the friend who hosted a baby shower the day after a cancelled IVF round. Or the time you sat in a Pain Quotidien eating overpriced avocado toast and she wept and you wept with her.

Tell Congress about the ones you were scared to call when you were successful.  And the joy you felt when they were. 

Tell Congress about the Outlook calendar reminders you have set to commemorate friend’s losses, because you are the only one brave enough to speak about it.

Tell Congress about the time you fought for the 7am monitoring appointment, so you wouldn’t be late to work again… and the second job you picked up to pay to make that monitoring appointment possible.

Tell Congress about about the "fertidar".  The knowing someone is struggling just with the way they answer, the "Do you have kids?" 

Tell Congress how you can't believe you asked that to a new guy friend.  You have the sensitivity to not do it for the women, and are mortified you let it slip on someone who desperately wants to be a Dad.

Tell Congress about the race against time.  The vaunted age of 35.  The hoping your friends don't read these stories.  The hoping they will ask you advice so you can give it.  Unvarnished.

Tell Congress you know you got pregnant on March 3^rd at 2:30pm, there were four people there, and it was too bad your husband couldn’t make it that time.

Tell Congress about how you had IVF at age 22 to preserve your fertility before going through those chemo treatments.

Tell Congress about your surrogate search, and the fact that you don’t want to find out the baby’s sex because it is literally the only thing in this process that has been a surprise.

Tell Congress about the story, financing, heartstrings, and courage behind the choice of adoption.

Tell Congress about about the soldier who lost motility due to a roadside bomb but still yearns to build a family.

Tell Congress about the feeling that finances control everything. The fact that you’d love a bigger house, any house, but you spent your down payment to build a family.

Tell them about the difficult choice you made to close your family building process and enjoy life without children

Tell them. 

This is a health care issue.  A financial issue.  A freedom issue. A family issue. Not a women’s issue.

Tell them.

Don’t let the political climate, the controversies in this city, your affinity or disdain for the politics of who are meeting with stop you.

Tell them.

You showed up.

It’s time to get out there, get off the menu and take a seat at the head of the table. 

There’s no greater work, and there’s no better group of people to get it done.

A minute of the speech?
https://twitter.com/ConceiveAble/status/865194221736779776

In the Interim

I'm still in the making-it-through the day place in life.

So here's to making in through with these peoples.

We are doing things like tackling football dummies.

Killing it at field hockey.

Shooting at lacrosse goals.

And getting your face painted to mark the occasion.

As you do.

My Best Work

Y'all.

The election rocked me.

Yes, this is me, six months later, talking about how the election rocked me.

Or at least just putting it out there because I'm about six months behind in processing.

It had nothing to do with Clinton.

Nothing to do with being surprised (I wasn't), nothing to do with the job hopes I had getting crushed, the planning I had done for months being put off track, the anticipatory waiting stripped away, nothing to do with cat hats and marching and people showing up to participate for the first time.

It had nothing to do with the abject disappointment I had when true and converted DJT believers in my Facebook feed started to creep out in the open.

Nothing to do with going to work every day with a tried and truer, and parsing every work of thirteen years feeling like he's a total stranger.

Nothing to do with my stablest of stable friends weep, fearing for their black husbands who work off hours, for the Hispanic maintenance workers in our office building who looked shell shocked, for the Mama who fears for their child attending weekend education at the mosque, for the families who rushed to get second parent adoptions done, for the village of powerful women sang their karaoke voices out with rage and joy and joyful rage.

I've changed my favorite sandwich shop, altered my commute route to not go back the White House. I've chosen my seats in restaurants so I don't have to look at the hotel.

I am far from alone.

And then last week, I saw my first second third and 50th signature red hat.  High school kids, joyful on their senior trips to DC.

It felt like the universe punched me in the face.

I wanted to stop, and yell "WHOAREYOUANDWHATAREYOUDOING??!"

The world has had some twists and turns in the last six months, and I can't find the exit because it wasn't in the map I was given.

I want off this map.

My life is joyful.

And it is joyful in ways, that for the first time in 20 years, have nothing to do with where my phone alarm, memorized drive to work, tick-tock every minute of when the Costco and the laundry and the grocery and the school meeting and the change of clothes and the pediatrician and the birthday party gift and the mortgage payment and the damn who kicked the bumper again, and let's not forget the beautiful precious totally planned parenting weekend moments were going to happen.

So I'm working but I'm putting my passion now into my best work.

I'm not missing another teacher coffee again.

I'm not skipping the trikeathon and the field day and the parent education and the opportunity to pick up food for the school food bank.

I'm not banking my use or lose vacation for a rainy day, and then losing it at the end of the year without fail.

I'm not wasting those minutes when I could be bouncing at trampoline parks and packing picnics and watching snakes and climbing walls when the kids are on Spring Break.

That's what I've always done.

No more.

I'm working on school food pantries and testifying on charter school laws.

I'm making all the meals I've been meaning to deliver for months.

I'm planting pinwheels instead of flowers in the chalky clay of our front yard that's never going to grow a damn thing after twelve years of trying.

I'm attending the fashion show and buying something out of my comfort zone.  (But let's be honest, after I find a better coupon code online)

I'm noticing that bunches of flowers are $5.99 at Trader Joes, and $4.00 at Harris Teeter and I'm buying those flowers.

I did this work. My best work.  For the last seven days.

It is good work indeed.

I'm going to work to live.  Pay the bills for all this living.

Watch out kids.  This roller coaster has a new driver.

Photo Dump